End of August
I am feeling like I’m finally back into the rhythm of things in terms of my schedule and habits that I have been working on since traveling, getting sick, and being on vacation. I’m back to my daily workout routine on weekdays and on my Tuesday blog posting schedule. I haven’t started painting again, but there’s no time constraint or logistical blocker for that. I haven’t painted in a few months and I’m struggling with starting it up again, but I know that I need to force myself to do it and everything will be fine. My weekly updates are:
What I’m working on now:
I would like to start painting again this week on the “Sand, Sea, and Sky” collection of 6”x8” oil paintings I mentioned last week. Maybe I need to create more SMART goals around that to motivate myself further.
I’ve had a project titled “Instagram posts” on my list of projects for August, but it’s exactly not titled in the conducive way that Charles Gilkey describes in Start Finishing, so I definitely need to improve that. I guess a better title should be “Post on Instagram X times this month”. I have started posting more on Instagram the things I’ve been working on and I’m enjoying make Reels, which I didn’t think would happen. I’ll make a better project title and more SMART goals around this to help encourage me actually “finishing” this project and hopefully posting on social media will become more of a habit. It is “free” marketing, “free” cloud storage, and a good way for me to track the things that I’ve done.
Inputs
I finished reading Give and Take by Adam Grant. I’m still thinking about how I can implement/integrate what I’ve learned from it into my daily life and life as an artist. I think I have a decent idea of where I fall between giver, taker, and matcher styles across different situations/environments in my life. I also did take the short Give and Take Assessment on Grant’s website and scored 47% matcher, 40% giver, and 17% taker, which I think is fairly accurate. I love assessments and tests like this (ask me about my MBTI, Big 5, or Enneagram) and I love hearing what other people get (tell me what you score on the Give and Take Assessment!).
I renewed my loan of Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod and am still reading it.
I have two audiobooks on loan that would be great to start and listen to while I paint (I’m really trying to motivate myself here)
Outputs
I emailed the gallery owner in Pacifica and shared some photos of my work I thought would be a good fit for the gallery, so we’ll see what’ll happen. I will say that I am impressed with myself that I actually emailed them within a week instead of sitting on the task and then never doing it.
I’m also rounding out the last few days at my data science job. I’ve been in a lot of meetings and very deep into the process of transitioning work and knowledge and it feels like I’m outputting a lot (aka exerting a lot of energy). I’ve been meeting with many of my colleagues and it feels a little sad that I’m leaving, but the conversations are really nice and fun and they make me feel very excited about this next step that I’m taking!
